Samsung are reportedly dropping their long-awaited foldable smartphone next year

GQ

July 19, 2018

But will the tech catch on?

In a long list of tech advancements that never quite caught on, we’re predicting that the long-awaited foldable smartphone is probably going to sit somewhere around the Sinclair C5, Windows 8 and Google Glass. Nonetheless, Samsung seem to be going all in on it, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that their first one-screen foldable smartphone is due for an early 2019 release.

The phone, tentatively dubbed the Samsung Galaxy X by journalists, will consist of a single 7-inch screen which can fold up into two halves. On the rear half will be a camera, while it’s not known whether or not the front-facing half will have a screen at the front as well. “When the phone is folded,” according to insiders that the Journal cited as their main source, “its exterior shows a small display bar on one side and cameras on the other.”

Samsung hope that the nature of the phone, which combines the versatility of a tablet with the portability of a normal smartphone, will help endear it not just to the ultra-premium set, but also a new generation of media users who are turning to their phones to use Netflix and run online multiplayer games like Fortnite and Pokemon Go!

It’s likely that the phone will require a sizeable battery and processor upgrade to handle the hardware its been given, meaning the Galaxy X will probably cost somewhere in the region of $500 more than the brand’s current flagship phones. That’s a significant gamble on people’s desire to pay more for what is, at the moment, essentially a novelty. Samsung are reportedly planning a small rollout in the early half of 2019, with the aim of testing the market for a wider release in the later half of next year.

However, if the project turns out to be a success, it’s thought that Samsung will have an entirely new frontier of the Smartphone market in the palm of their hand. This is important in a world where smartphone sales, for the first time ever, declined. Samsung in particular have bore the brunt of this, with sales of the Galaxy S9 falling 20% from those of its predecessor.